Adventures in archaeological conservation

I recently wrote a post for the Institute for Field Research’s blog on “Community Collaboration in Archaeology”. The post (which is also available in Spanish) talks about the ways we collaborated with the communities we lived and worked with during our 2018 season on the Corral Redondo Project (Proyecto Arqueológico Corral Redondo). You can find the blog post here: A Day in the Life at Corral Redondo

Gave a presentation to the Andean Working Group at UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology focusing on conservation and outreach efforts during the first season (2018) at the Corral Redondo Project (Proyecto Arqueologico Corral Redondo).

This summer I’ll be heading to the south coast of Peru to work on a brand new excavation at the site of Corral Redondo. This is the first time I’ll be working on an excavation in Peru and I’m really excited for this new adventure, but also maybe a little nervous. Of course the exciting part is to get to travel to a new place, experience the culture and life there for several weeks, and to meet and work with new people. But also the bit of uncertainty about the work and the project and what the day to day will be like can add a little bit of stress to starting a new archaeological project.

When conservators are working on archaeological excavations, their work often encompasses many different aspects of field conservation. This can include materials identification and characterization, lifting fragile artifacts and aiding in archaeological research. No matter what facet of the project they are involved in, the work can be challenging without the comforts of a well-stocked lab and requires lots of problem solving and improvisation. (continue reading)

Post I wrote for AIC’s blog “Conservators Converse” on a talk given at the 43rd Annual Meeting, 2015, in Miami, FL.

“Documenting textile impressions or pseudomorphs on archaeological objects is very challenging. In my own experience, I’ve found trying to photograph textile pseudomorphs, especially when they are poorly preserved, very difficult and involves taking multiple shots with varying light angles, which still often results in poor quality images. This is why Emily Frank‘s paper was of particular interest to me because it provided an alternative to digital photography that would be feasible and more effective in documenting textile impressions: Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI).” (continue reading)

We are all aware of how difficult it is to be able to take a sample from an artifact (both permission-wise and logistically) and when we need to, more often than not, the samples we take are extremely small. Once we have our precious sample, we try to use as many examination and analytical techniques we can that are non-destructive to get the greatest amount of information from that one sample. We may reach the point, however, where we need to use an analytical technique that may require the sample to be mounted, cut up or consumed, and we need to find ways to have the samples extend as far as possible through all the stages of investigation. (continue reading)